Toshiba tunes into TransferJet

Toshiba will bring Sony's TransferJet technology to its product range in the latter half of the year.

The company today demo'd the near-field communications technology today, using it to transfer photos taken on a specially modified TG01 Windows Mobile smartphone to a similarly prototypical Qosmio laptop.

TransferJet was developed by Sony and made available to other manufacturers through an industry consortium. It specifies a data throughput rate of up to 560Mb/s, though in the real world you'll see speeds of around 370Mb/s, Toshiba officials said. Not quite USB 2.0, but still way above Bluetooth.

The catch: NFC requires the two devices to be no more than 30mm apart and, ideally, touching.

Alas, Toshiba's people refused to be drawn on what products TransferJet will initially be added to, or what kind of price premium the NFC technology will command. However, they did say it's likely to be added to a few models at first, before being rolled out more broadly in due course.

Demo'd as it was by Toshiba UK's laptop team, TransferJet will almost certainly appear on notebooks first. ®